The waiting was torturous.

Kaldalis’s quest didn’t progress or vanish, so he knew more was coming. But there was no sign of anything approaching out of the jungle.

Seconds felt like minutes as they ticked by, everyone on edge and waiting for the charge.

Kaldalis wanted to let people stand down and rest, but with every moment that passed, the tension built more and more.

With every moment that passed, his imagination built up a more and more indomitable force when the attack finally came.

Just as Kaldalis felt the fear and anxiety growing in himself, he felt it growing in the people around him. Something had to break the tension. If it didn’t happen soon, Kaldalis was going to have to do something. Like start giving pointless orders just to get people moving around and test his authority. Or, even worse, burst into song.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to take such extreme measures. There was a disturbance at the back of the courtyard behind the gate. Someone was pushing through the ranks of adventurers, trying to make for the gate.

Kaldalis anticipated it being Garyung. The man was still notably absent from the front. If not him, then perhaps a runner from the council, calling for him to give a report on the battle.

Kaldalis leaped off of the wall, activating Slow Fall to glide down to the ground level to meet the messenger.

“Make a path,” Kaldalis called as he descended dramatically to the ground. He gestured with both hands for the group of ready and waiting adventurers to part. “Everybody, move!”

The groups parted clumsily - trying to stick together in their parties rather than making a neat path for the runner - which meant the messenger was upon him before he recognized who it was. She emerged from the crowd and slammed into him, sending him stumbling for a moment before he got his feet positioned to support her weight as she clung to his chest, gasping for breath.

“Heluna?” Kaldalis said, stunned. “What’s wrong?”

She was out of breath from the run. It was unsurprising, as a DPS class, she had less physical stamina than a tank like Kaldalis, and her preferred weapon was twin daggers, and so her dash move wasn’t exactly the most energy-efficient.

Kaldalis tried to ignore how nice it felt for her to be clinging to him like this, and focused on the matter at hand.

“The beachside,” Heluna managed between gasps for air. She flapped one hand back in the direction she’d just run in from. “You have to… help.”

“Do you have time for this?” Myrin asked, trotting up beside Kaldalis. “Aren’t we supposed to be looking for the next siege wave?”

The two statements connected with a click.

“Beachside gate! To the beachside gate!” Kaldalis called, raising his voice to a roar to address the surrounding adventurers. “Archers, and the six killbox teams stay here to keep watch on the jungle side. Everyone else, with me!”

In a single motion, Kaldalis scooped Heluna up in his arms and activated Jump, launching himself across town towards the ocean. With Slowfall still ticking, every leap was a huge sailing bound, just shy of flight. Behind him, the mass of adventurers in the courtyard gave chase by whatever means they had.

As soon as he was up in the air, his fears were confirmed.

There were Infernal Horde battering the walls on the ocean side of the town. And with all the adventurers massed on the jungle side, only the guards that Kaldalis had sent back from the jungle gate were in position to fight.

But not only the guards were there.

There were other townsfolk squaring up to fight, including the sailors.

That must have been why Heluna had come to him. Her friends were in danger.

And, as NPCs, they were all in danger of permanent death if the fight went poorly.

Fortunately, it looked like there was one saving grace. Garyung was positioned at the top of the gate, directing archer fire and ready to leap down if the gates were breached. That answered the question of where he had managed to find himself in the middle of this attack.

Kaldalis landed just inside the beachside gate and immediately put Heluna down.

He had work to do.

“Thanks for coming to the rescue, hun,” Heluna said with a sheepish smile. “Sorry to be a fuckin’ dramatic bitch about it.”

“And I was about to thank you for it,” Kaldalis said, offering a grin in return. “Being a dramatic bitch was probably the fastest way to get me here.”

He gave her a quick peck on the cheek before launching himself over the wall and into the fray - just as he had on the jungle side. He needed to buy time again for the massed adventurers following him to get into position. And considering the lack of archer support or a dedicated killbox, he imagined that the situation was going to get worse before it got better.

As he leaped, he caught Garyung’s eye, the burly Bhogad offering him a broad smile.

“About time,” Garyung called to him.

“Don’t worry, boss,” Kaldalis said, offering a smirk and a salute as he sailed over the man’s head. “I got it all under control.”

As Kaldalis crested over the top of the gate, he only had a second to survey the situation. The forces arrayed against them were not so dire as the one on the jungle side had been, but only because the enemies had spawned underwater, so only those that could survive down there were coming to the surface and attacking Cotanaku.

Sentient globes of water were appearing in numbers, but the other elementals were missing. Similarly, a number of the Conceptuals were absent as well, with only the more abstract ones emerging from the water. Kaldalis wasn’t happy to see the destructive Malum emerging from the waves - and smashing at the pier already - and the healing Globins that would complicate the fight, but there were no Syncoresi or Xorns.

He didn’t have time to do a full inventory of the forces smashing at the walls here. Even if the enemy forces were weaker here, their defenses were more vulnerable, too. As soon as he hit the sand he had to get to work. The walls on this side of the town were weaker, having enjoyed much fewer upgrades than the jungle side, and with fewer watchtowers.

No doubt that had been a political move.

Garyung didn’t want the town’s reinforcement to look like a threat to the Zarans. Until this moment, the only thing that had approached from the ocean was traffic from the other towns.

Though it was possible that there would be additional costs incurred for upgrading this wall. As Kaldalis came down and started to use Sweeping Strikes to peel the enemies away from the wall, he spared a glance up at the stone surface.

The memorial.

There were names listed there belonging to the NPCs who had died over the course of the founding of Cotanaku. They were the ones whose loss had inspired Kaldalis to go above and beyond to protect the lives of those who couldn’t respawn, even before he knew they were real people.

The first swipe of Kaldalis’s spear carved through the Infernal Horde in a great arc, drawing their undivided attention right to him. As he launched himself away from the group he’d aggroed, more were still emerging from the ocean and charging up the beach. He swept his spear around again to catch the next wave before bounding back at the wall, by the gate.

The beachside gate had been badly damaged.

Against the kind of muscle the Malum were bringing to bear, it was starting to crack and crumble, and the added corrosive efforts of the water and poison elementals were breaking it apart even more. It would only hold for a couple of minutes under continued assault. Kaldalis immediately pulled those foes away from the weak point the entrance represented, but had to launch himself away once those monsters turned their ire towards him. Globs of purple poison hurled his way forced him to back off, burning the last of his Jump cooldown to get to the next clump of foes attacking the wall.

He had to hope it was enough.

Without his Jump ability, keeping ahead of the gathered mob was going to be impossible. He just had to sprint up the beach and hope that he could keep ahead.

Keeping ahead was getting harder by the second, though. Now that he’d gotten the attention of a sizable group, many of the other Infernal Horde were orienting on him as they lumbered out of the water. His only saving grace was that when they lurched onto the beach, they struggled for a moment to wade through the shallow water, giving him enough time to react to their appearance.

Of course. That was the answer.

Despite how it had appeared when they first arrived on the islands, the Infernal Horde weren’t native to this world. They were literally made of debris from between the universes. They were forced to operate under the system, but they weren’t fully integrated. They didn’t enjoy the same mechanics as a player character, or even an NPC.

Kaldalis turned sharply and ran right into the water.